


Backwards and in High Heels: A Biography of Peggy Carter

by lit_chick08



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gap Filler, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-03 22:04:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5308706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit_chick08/pseuds/lit_chick08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Peggy Carter's life (which she most certainly would not want anyone to read)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1921-1940

  
_"A girl should be two things: who and what she wants."_ \- Coco Chanel 

Her father is a war hero.

Just like her name, it is one of those things Margaret Carter does not remember learning. There are no ribbons or medals displayed; he is not one of those men who love to regale everyone with his tales. But anyone and everyone Margaret meets asks her if she knows what a brave, heroic man her father is.

Her father smiles tightly when people say it before waving her away, always offering some variation of, “Peggy, darling, go play.”

Her mother hates when he calls her “Peggy” and pinches her ear every time she introduces herself as such. One morning Margaret is certain her mother will remove entire clumps of her hair as she runs the brush through her mess of curls while snapping, “Your name is Margaret Elizabeth Carter. I did not name you _Peggy_.”

But when she corrects her father the next time he calls her Peggy, he swings her up into his arms, not even caring how he’s messing his suit, and kisses her temple. “What your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Margaret is too much of a mouthful for such a little girl.”

She loves her father more than her mother. Even at six-years-old, Margaret knows this to be true and also knows she cannot ever tell anyone. 

It is the first secret she ever keeps. 

When her mother becomes pregnant with her little brother, Margaret starts to spend more time with her father. Her mother is always in bed, Margaret foisted off onto nannies and servants, and her father starts coming home early from the office, taking her to the park, to the cinema, for long walks around their posh neighborhood. Even then Margaret understood there was something sad about her father, something that made him different from her uncles or playmates’ fathers.

Harold George Carter the III is born in January, a screeching, red-faced creature that smells foul and wakes Margaret at all hours. Her mother’s temper grows shorter, always insisting Margaret is making too much noise and will wake the baby, and her father grows quieter, spending more and more time in his study and less and less time at work.

Harold George Carter the II eats his pistol in November, ten years after the end of the war that made him a hero. Margaret is seven-years-old and will not learn how her father died for another three years. Her uncle tells her how her father was sick, even though Margaret never heard him cough even once, and how her mother will need her help with baby Hal. He makes her promise she’ll be a good girl.

“Can you do that for me, Margaret?” Uncle Simon asks.

“My name’s Peggy.”

Much to her mother’s frustration, she will never introduce herself as Margaret ever again.

* * *

Her mother marries Lord Clarence Danvers two weeks prior to Peggy’s tenth birthday. She is forced into a truly terrible pale pink frock, made to hold Hal’s chubby hand so he does not wander away, and her dour expression gets her a particularly sharp pinch from her mother in order to get the wedding portrait she wants.

They move into Clarence’s sprawling estate outside the city, leaving behind the townhouse Peggy loved, but her protests fall on deaf ears. When she complains about having to leave her school, her mother sniffs.

“You aren’t going to have to worry about that.”

That is how Peggy learns she will be going to boarding school.

* * *

Harold Carter had money, but Clarence Danvers has wealth. Peggy didn’t know there was a difference until she is delivered to her French boarding school in a car driven by her new stepfather’s driver. The school administrators fall all over themselves to cater to “Lady Danvers” and Peggy sees how much her mother loves it, this sort of special attention her husband’s position in the world has given her. Peggy doesn’t like it, doesn’t understand it.

“Everything you do here reflects on Clarence and myself,” her mother lectures as they unpack her things.

“What do I care about Clarence?” 

Peggy starts when her mother grasps her chin tight, pulling her face close. “Do you know how lucky you are? Do you think most men want to marry a woman with two children? Do you think most men would cover your father’s debts or provide such a good life? Clarence is our second chance, and I will not have you doing anything to ruin that.”

Peggy vows to herself then and there that she’ll never be a woman who has to rely on her husband for a good life.

* * *

She picks up French fast, pleasing her mother for what she’s certain is the first time by writing her long, polite letters in her new language. Her mother thinks she’s finally becoming a proper young woman, and Peggy thinks she doesn’t even know what that is anymore.

She learns German next, practicing for hours and driving her suitemates to distraction. By the time she is approaching graduation, she is fluent in French, German, Latin, Italian, and conversational in Spanish. Combined with all the upper-level math courses she’s taken, university will be next.

“University?” her mother echoes when she suggests it at Christmas dinner, setting down her silverware with a clang. “I thought we’d discussed finishing school.”

“ _You_ discussed finishing school,” Peggy corrects, lifting her napkin from her lap and setting it beside her plate. “I want more than that.”

“Elizabeth,” Clarence begins but her mother cuts him off.

“A lady of your age and breeding doesn’t belong in university. Finishing school is the perfect opportunity to gain the skills – “

“I have no interest in any of the skills I’d learn there, and you’re always telling me how you’ve paid a fortune for my education. Shouldn’t I use that? I have no desire to be a socialite. There’s an engineering program – “

“Engineering!” Elizabeth takes a heavy swallow from her wine glass. “No man is ever going to marry you if you play at being one of them.”

“Perhaps I don’t _want_ to marry.”

Before Elizabeth can respond, Clarence speaks up, “If you want to go to university, I don’t see why not. You’ll live at home, of course.”

If this is the compromise she has to make to escape learning social graces in Switzerland, Peggy will make it.

But in the end it does not matter. Germany invades Poland, Britain and France declares war on Germany, and the entire trajectory of Peggy Carter’s life changes.

* * *

“If you want to join the war effort, nurses are always needed.”

“I don’t want to be a nurse. I want to do something useful!”

Uncle Simon looks at her over his glasses. “You don’t think nurses are useful?”

Cheeks flushing bright red, Peggy amends, “No, of course nurses are useful, but I would not be a good nurse. I can speak French _and_ German! I was top of my class at school. I’m healthy and athletic – “

“And a woman,” Simon interrupts, his voice gentle. Running a hand over his thinning hair, he says, “I know what you are and what you’re capable of doing, Peg, but there’s no place for a woman on the front lines. I doubt you’re much of a typist, and knowing you, there’s no way you’d be satisfied fetching coffee and answering phones. That doesn’t leave many options.”

“No, I don’t want to be a secretary,” Peggy admits, “but there must be something I can do that isn’t bandaging wounds or filing papers! Please, Uncle Simon. I know you must know of something.” When he says nothing, she adds, “I know my father would want you to help me.”

Simon sighs, shaking his head with a good-natured smile on his face. “You are a Carter through and through, aren’t you?”

Knowing she’s broken his resistance, Peggy grins. “You taught me well.”

Simon rounds his desk, bending over to write something on a pad of paper. Handing the sheet to her, he orders, “If your mother asks, do not tell her I gave you this information.”

Peggy mimes zipping her lips, tucking the name and address into her pocketbook. It isn’t until after their lunch she looks at the piece of paper.

She has to use one of Clarence’s maps to find out where exactly Bletchley Park is.

* * *

She tells her mother and Clarence she is working as a secretary to a military official, which isn’t technically a lie. Honestly, neither of her guardians is that interested in what she’s doing. Mother is concerned about staying in England, insisting they go somewhere the war hasn’t reached yet, and while Clarence tries to remind her the war is almost everywhere, little Hal is sent to live with Great-Aunt Millie in the middle of nowhere. Peggy is, for all intents and purposes, an adult, and while her mother never would’ve thought of her as such if the Germans weren’t dropping bombs, she couldn’t exactly complain when Peggy wanted to leave too.

It isn’t precisely what Uncle Simon promised her. She is still mostly a secretary, fetching coffee, filing, and becoming a passably good typist, but she is also called upon to translate from time to time. She shares a flat with three other girls who work in the building, and one of them, a woman called Jane only a few years older than Peggy, is a genuine code breaker. The other two girls don’t care much about the work, happy for paychecks that help care for their families at home, but Peggy is fascinated.

“Can you teach me?” she asks Jane one evening while Lucy and Clara are out with two men from town.

“You want to be a code breaker?”

“I want to be useful.”

Jane studies her for a moment before fetching a tablet and a pencil. Gesturing for Peggy to sit, she writes out a series of letters and numbers and starts to explain what a simple cipher is.

Six months later when there is an opening on Jane’s team, Peggy is pleased to be plucked from the secretarial pool and finally given a chance to prove her value.

* * *

A man in an American military uniform appears one day being lead through the offices by one of the higher ups Peggy has no contact with. This doesn’t spark any curiosity in her; Americans have been showing up more frequently despite their alleged refusal to become involved in the war, and it is not her concern. Her job is to break codes, something she is getting quite good at, and even if she goes a bit stir crazy behind a desk all day, it beats anything her mother had planned for her.

On the second day of the American’s presence in the offices, Gordon Donovan, the man whose name her uncle Simon first gave her all those months ago, comes to fetch her.

“Have I done something wrong?” she asks as he takes her down a corridor she is unfamiliar with.

“Not at all. You speak fluent German, do you not, Miss Carter?”

“ _Ja_ ,” she can’t help but reply.

The sour looking American is seated at a long table alongside several of the men in charge of the Park as well as someone in a RAF uniform. A handful of men Peggy has worked alongside since arriving eight months earlier are also there, all looking a bit uncertain and pale. These are some of the brightest men Peggy has ever met but hearty, they are not. Little Hal is not quite twelve, and Peggy would wager on him over these men in a fight.

“This is it?” the American scoffs. He has an accent to his gruff voice, sounding less like the stars in the movies Lucy and Clara drag her to and more like the cowboys in the ones Hal prefers. Regardless, Peggy knows when she is being measured and found wanting, and it offends her. Without even thinking, she raises her chin and glares at the man.

“All of them meet the specifications you gave us,” Donovan says, looking a bit nervous himself. 

“You expect me to drop one of these guys behind enemy lines?” the American challenges, gesturing towards them dismissively. “I might as well send in a dog. At least he could run.”

“All of our candidates are fit. They’ve all passed physicals – “

“Passing a physical and being dropped out of plane into an active war zone are two different things.” The American stands, coming around the table to inspect them as if they are chattel, and Peggy feels her irritation growing. Whatever this man wants, she does not want to do it. No, what she wants to do is punch him in his smug, wrinkled face.

It must show on her face because when the American stops in front of her, he says, “You got a problem, girlie?”

Unable to hold her tongue a moment longer, she snaps, “My name is Carter, not _girlie_ , and my only problem is you speaking about me as if I’m not standing right here.”

To her surprise, the American’s face cracks into something like a smile. “How old are you, Carter?”

“Nineteen, sir.”

“You married?”

“No, sir.”

“Join up so you can _get_ married?”

Peggy scoffs. “No, sir.”

“You ever fire a gun, Carter?”

“I hunted pheasants with my uncle once.”

“You get any?”

“Three. More than my uncle or his son,” she adds, still proud of the achievement three years later.

The American sighs before turning towards Donovan and the others. “Well, she’ll do.”

His name is Colonel Chester Phillips, he says, and he’s part of a new American organization called the Strategic Scientific Reserve. They are a part of the war effort that even Americans did not know existed, and they needed someone who was not an American citizen to help them extract a German scientist from Germany.

“If you get caught, no one will come for you,” Phillips tells her with what she will come to learn is his characteristic bluntness. “The whole reason I need a Brit is so this doesn’t blow back on America. You understand?”

Peggy smoothes invisible wrinkles from her skirt. “You want a disposable spy.”

“If you want to put it that way.” Phillips smirks. “You want me to take you back now?”

Peggy shakes her head. “No, I can be a spy.” Meeting his gaze, she adds, voice firm, “But I am _not_ disposable.”

“Prove it.”

This time Peggy smirks. Colonel Phillips didn’t know it then but the last thing anyone wanted to do was challenge Peggy Carter.

* * *

They spend six months training her, flying her to some secret base in Canada for arms training and hand-to-hand lessons before returning her to England to learn infiltration and evasion. She writes letters to Hal and her mother telling them of her secretarial work at Bletchley Park; she sends Jane, Lucy, and Clara letters asking after them and promising to visit soon. She even manages to send a postcard or two to Uncle Simon, thanking him for helping her secure a job.

It strikes her rather suddenly one afternoon when she is the first to return from the evasion drill, her fellow SSR trainees a minimum of fifteen minutes behind her, that she is truly good at this. Part of her can’t even believe she’s thinking it because this whole thing has been so surreal. Just over a year ago she was begging her parents to let her go to university and now…now she’s training to steal a scientist from the Nazis.

“Will anyone tell my parents if I’m killed?” she asks Phillips the night before the mission. When he just looks at her, she adds, “I know you can’t tell them the truth, but could you make something up so they don’t think I just disappeared?”

Phillips pulls a flask out of his coat and takes a heavy pull from it before passing it to Peggy. She takes it and hesitates for only a second before taking a sip. It burns like fire all the way down her throat, but she manages not to cough.

“I take care of my men, Carter,” Phillips says, “even when they’re women.”

Peggy thinks he might just miss her if she dies.

* * *

Even after all her training, there is no way to prepare for actual bullets flying over her head. The scientist is huddled on the floor of the Jeep she’s driving, his hands folded over his head, and Peggy wishes she could do the same. The other men in her team are shooting at the Nazis pursuing them, and Peggy hopes they do their job. She does not want to die in some godforsaken German forest, but she _really_ doesn’t want to die having failed in her mission.

When the shooting has finally stopped and they are safely ensconced in their safe house, the scientist looks at her over his cup of tea, his hands wrapped around it for warmth, and says, “I do not believe I have thanked you yet.”

Peggy shrugs. “I was just doing my job.”

“No, it takes an extraordinary person to do what you did today.” He offers his hand. “I am Abraham Erskine.”

Peggy knows this. She knows everything there is to know about this man. But she still takes his hand. “Peggy Carter.”

“You are a soldier?”

She’s never introduced herself by her given title, which is why it takes her a moment to respond. “Agent, actually. I’m Agent Peggy Carter with the SSR.”

“Agent Peggy Carter with the SSR,” Erskine repeats before patting her hand. “I will never forget what you’ve done for me tonight, Agent Carter.”

She writes it off as lip service, grateful words from a man still drunk on the adrenaline of nearly having died.

At least she did until Phillips calls her into his office two months after turning Erskine over to the SSR and thrusts several files at her.

Peggy opens the top file to see a stack of papers with men’s photos attached. “What’s all this?” 

“You’re being reassigned.”

“I don’t understand.”

Phillips shakes his head. “Can you ever just take an order without arguing with me?”

“I’m not arguing. I’m just confused.”

“Erskine wants you on his team.”

Peggy blinks in surprise. Since liberating him from Schmidt and his men, she hadn’t given the elderly German man another thought. Her success had lead to more missions, and those required her attention. “What sort of team?”

“Erskine is going to help us win the war, but he needs help finding suitable men for the job. He specifically asked for you.”

“He did?”

“Guess you made quite the impression.” Handing her another clutch of files, he declares, “You’re shipping out to New York at 0600.”

* * *

There are only a few men at the airstrip when Peggy arrives with her duffel. They are readying the plane, loading up the luggage and cargo when someone saunters up next to her, the end of his cigarette giving an orange glow to his handsome face.

“You must be Carter,” the mustachioed man says. He’s American, about her height, and does not have the build of an agent. Peggy thinks he’d fit in well at Bletchley Park. God knows the girls would swoon for him.

“Must I be?”

He smiles around the cigarette. “Howard Stark. We’re going to be working together.”

Judging by the look in his eyes, Howard Stark wants to do more than just work with her. It takes everything in Peggy not to roll her eyes.

* * *

Dr. Erskine welcomes her and Howard into his laboratory, and Peggy smiles at the way Howard seems to be a kid in a candy shop. Whatever this project is, Howard knows more about it than Peggy does, and they are already speaking in some sort of scientific gibberish for several minutes before Peggy cuts in, “Excuse me! What exactly am I supposed to be doing here?”

Erskine clicks his tongue, shaking his head. “Oh, Agent Carter, I’m sorry. I thought Colonel Phillips told you. You are going to help us find our super soldier.”

“Super soldier?” she repeats. 

Erskine hands her a file folder, the words **Project Rebirth** stamped upon it. “We are going to change the world, Agent Carter.”

Peggy will wonder for the rest of her life if Dr. Erskine knew just how true his words were.


	2. 1941-1944

“You’ve got that look again.”

Howard smirks, lighting her cigarette before lighting his own. Dr. Erskine puts up with much from the two of them, but he draws the line at smoking in his lab. “What look is that?”

“The one that says I’m going to consider punching you.”

His smirk becomes a grin, wide and playful, and Peggy cannot help but smiling in return. There is something infectious about Howard’s boyishness, something that breaks up the darkness of what is happening and what they’ve been tasked to do. “I think we should go dancing.”

Peggy laughs, taking a heavy drag off of her cigarette. The smoke curls around her head along with her breath, the biting iciness of the New York November air making her lungs ache. “I have no idea why you’d think that.”

“When was the last time you had fun?”

“Turning you down is a great deal of fun for me.”

Howard bumps her with his shoulder. “C’mon. We’ll head on down to the Stork Club, have a few drinks, dance – “

“And then you’ll what, sweep me off my feet and straight onto my back?”

The boyishness of his smile starts to slide towards flirtatious. “Why, Agent Carter, the mouth on you.”

There is no real intent behind Howard’s words and deeds. Since meeting two years earlier, he’s half-heartedly attempted to get her into bed, but Peggy suspects it’s more out of habit than real desire. Howard certainly does not want for female companionship, and though she is far more discreet than her friend, Peggy does not want for male company either. It does still surprise her though how close of friends they’ve become. In the past men like Howard Stark, men so swollen with pride and self-importance, made Peggy sick. But unlike those men, Howard did not talk down to her or expect her to trip over herself praising him. He saw her as an equal, and Peggy loved him for it.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”

“Some day I’m going to get you on the dance floor,” Howard vows.

Peggy stubs out her cigarette against the building. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

* * *

“You look too thin,” Dr. Erskine tells her one evening in German while Peggy is debriefing him on the latest round of soldiers to fail to meet his stringent requirements for Project Rebirth.

Peggy tries to push down the flare of irritation she feels. “I believe we have more important things to discuss other than my weight.”

“What good is my right hand woman if she is too sick to do her job?” Erskine counters, already moving towards the small refrigerator in the corner. Setting a block of cheese and an apple before her, he gestures towards them. “You can talk and eat at the same time.”

“My mother would beg to differ,” Peggy says even as she cuts herself off a slice of cheese.

“How is your family? They’re safe?”

Peggy wonders if they can go back to discussing her weight. “Last I spoke to them, yes. They’ve moved into the countryside save my stepfather. He’s remained near London for work.”

“You do not speak of them much, your family. You have siblings?”

“A younger brother seven years my junior. His name is Hal.” Peggy pushes a file towards him. “I think he could be a fine candidate.”

Erskine glances down and shakes his head. “No, he will not work. You are not close to your parents?”

Peggy huffs. “We’re supposed to be working.”

“You are practicing your German, which is getting quite rusty, I’m afraid.”

“Then have me conjugate verbs.”

Erskine sits back in his chair. “So you are _not_ close to your parents.”

Spinning the apple to avoid his eyes, she says, “They’re perfectly nice people. We just have different ideas about what I should do with my life.”

“They want you to get married, have babies?”

“It’s what well-bred girls do.” Peggy rolls her eyes. “Whatever that means.”

“You remind me of my daughter. If you told her to go left, she’d go right just to show you she could. It used to drive her mother mad.”

Peggy pauses. “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“I had three and a son as well.” Erskine takes a long sip from his bitter coffee. “They are gone now as well as my wife.”

“Schmidt?”

Erskine shakes his head. “It was not safe to be Jewish in Germany long before Schmidt found me.”

Before Peggy can respond, her heart breaking for him, Howard comes rushing into the lab, making a beeline for the radio.

“Howard, what the hell – “

“The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor,” he pants, turning on the radio and fiddling with the dial until finding a news report. “They’re trying to wipe out our fleet.”

As they sit around the radio listening to the reports of destruction and devastation in Hawaii, Erskine looks over at Peggy and lays a hand atop hers.

“We must work harder now.”

* * *

With enlistment higher than ever, Peggy feels as if she meets every incoming soldier in the American military, and still they cannot find the right man for Project Rebirth. The formula is still far from ready; despite the constant pressure from President Roosevelt, Howard and Erskine cannot rush it and risk ruining everything. But even so, when Peggy is summoned to Washington, she is afraid she is going to be taken to task and potentially removed from the project for having failed to find the right soldier as of yet.

She is surprised when she enters the office only to find Colonel Phillips is not there. Instead there is Director Grandy, the head of SSR, and a man Peggy does not recognize. As Grandy gestures for her to sit, Peggy wonders if this is how people get fired in America.

“Agent Carter, I’d like you to meet Agent Weeks from the FBI. We’re working together on a case involving Dr. Erskine.”

“Is something wrong with him?”

“Not at all,” Agent Weeks answers. “The truth is, we have reason to believe a US Senator is about to sell information regarding Dr. Erskine to the Nazis. We need to make sure that doesn’t.”

“So you’d like me to help in his apprehension?”

Agent Weeks smirks, and Peggy bites the inside of her cheek to keep from snarling. She knows condescension when she sees it. “We’d like you to intercept the information he’s selling and replace it with false information. Then, if the Nazis attempt to use it, we’ll know for sure if the Senator is dirty.”

“So you’d like me to infiltrate his offices?”

Director Grandy leans forward, folding his hands on the table. “Agent Carter, the truth is, you’ve been tasked for this mission because we need a woman. Senator Williams will be in New York in two weeks time to sell the information. He’s…partial to the company of dark-haired women and he’ll have the information in his briefcase. While you’re in the company, you’ll remove it and replace it with the decoy information.”

Her blood going cold, she asks through clenched teeth, “And when will I be doing this?”

Director Grandy doesn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed as he says, “Once Senator Williams has fallen asleep.”

As she takes the train back to New York, Peggy wonders if any male agent has ever been ordered to fuck a target for information.

* * *

When she tells Erskine and Howard about Senator Williams’s plan, they are calm until Peggy explains what she’ll be doing to stop the sale of information.

“Fuck no!” Howard exclaims, leaping to his feet. “There’s no fucking way they’re whoring you out to this guy!”

“Howard,” Erskine murmurs, shaking his head, his face sad and serious.

“You can’t do this!”

“I have my orders,” Peggy says, her voice even despite the urge to scream growing in her chest, “and my first priority is to keep Dr. Erskine safe. That’s what I’ll do.”

Erskine rises, patting Peggy on the back. “You are too good for the SSR.”

The sentiment is nice, but it will not save her from being pinned beneath Senator Williams in two weeks time.

* * *

Peggy lives in what could politely be called a hovel rented for her by the SSR. The name on the lease is “Margo Campbell” and it is what her lecherous landlord calls her on the rare occasions their paths cross. She isn’t even aware anyone knows where she lives until the night she is to meet Senator Williams and someone knocks on her door. Assuming it is her landlord, Peggy plans on ignoring it until Howard calls, “Pegs?”

“What are you doing here?” she hisses, pulling him inside. 

“Helping you.” Brushing off his coat, he adds, “You sure do know how to make a guy feel welcome.”

“You’re not welcome.”

“I will be in a minute.” Eyeing her up, he adds, “Though I might get distracted by that dress. God _damn_ , Pegs, you’re a dish.”

“I will break your jaw.”

Holding up his left hand in surrender, Howard reaches into his pocket with his right. Pulling out a gold tube, he extends it towards her. Peggy accepts it, rolling it over in her hands. On the side is an impression reading **102 Sweet Dreams** and when she removes the cap, she’s surprised to see a bright shade of red lipstick.

“You came all the way over here to give me lipstick?”

Howard rolls his eyes. “No, I came all the way over here to give you an Abraham Erskine special. Apply some of that, kiss a fella, and boom! He’s out like a light. Longer the kiss, longer the knock-out.” When Peggy says nothing, he adds, “You didn’t really think we’d let you do it, did you?”

Peggy feels her throat tightening with emotion. Capping the lipstick, she wraps her arms around Howard, pulling him in for a tight hug. “Thank you.”

His lips brush her temple. “Be safe.”

* * *

It doesn’t surprise her when the lipstick works. She’s yet to see any creation of Erskine’s _not_ work. When Senator Williams drops back on the bed, Peggy works fast, stripping him of his clothing and wrangling him under the rough hotel blankets. When he makes a noise, Peggy kisses him again, longer this time, and as he gives a little snore, she breaks into his briefcase.

By the time Williams comes to his senses, Peggy is zipping up her dress, praising his prowess. Between her kiss and the half-dozen Scotches he’d consumed before leaving the hotel bar, it’s easy enough to convince him that they had quite the tumble he just doesn’t remember.

“Can I see you again next time I’m town?” he slurs, opening his wallet and counting out bills for her.

“Of course, sugar.”

She sends the money to Lucy as a wedding present.

The next time she sees Erskine, she kisses his cheek and murmurs, “ _Danke_.”

It is the only time they acknowledge what he did for her, but Peggy knows from the small smile on his lips that Erskine understands just how much it means to her.

* * *

Her mother sends her a telegram telling her of the death of Uncle Simon and his family. There are no details beyond a bomb being dropped on the city, and by the time it reaches her, the service has already passed. 

Peggy cries harder than she has since her father died all those years ago, wailing for her poor uncle, her sweet aunt, and their son. She calls Phillips, requests a few days leave to mourn, and he grants it. 

It doesn’t even bother her this time when Howard shows up on her door, this time with a bottle of bourbon and a carton of cigarettes.

“There’s going to be nothing left of London by the time this bloody war is over,” Peggy says as she and Howard lay side by side on her Murphy bed, blowing cigarette smoke up to the ceiling. 

“Then we’ll rebuild it. My money, your stubbornness, it’ll be back to normal in no time.”

She chokes on a laugh. “That simple, hmm?”

“Nothing’s simple anymore but we’ll figure it out.”

She’s glad one of them is so certain.

* * *

“Erskine thinks we have a candidate,” Colonel Phillips tells her as they approach Camp Lehigh. “Hand picked him.”

Peggy arches an eyebrow. “How did he even meet him?”

“Apparently he was trying to enlist, been rejected I don’t know how many times as a 4F.”

“4F? And he thinks he’s right for Project Rebirth?”

Phillips snorts. “That’s up to you. The rest of this unit, they’re all candidates. Now that the serum is right, we can’t be dragging our feet anymore. You’ll whip them in the shape, find the right ones.”

“Are we so certain the right man is in this group?”

“He’s going to have to be.”

* * *

Years later when people asked her if she knew Steve Rogers was going to be Captain America from the moment she met him, Peggy would lie; she’d expound upon how you could just sense the greatness coming from him because that is what they all wanted to hear. But the truth was, the first time she saw Steve Rogers, all she saw was a small, asthmatic man with more bravery than commonsense. He couldn’t keep pace with the other men, he lacked all manner of confidence, and when she’d write down information on the soldiers, he was always at the bottom of the pack.

But he was kind and sweet and Peggy genuinely liked him.

“He is the one,” Erskine insists one morning over breakfast.

“He’s a good man, I agree, but the world is full of good men.”

“I will prove it.”

“Good luck. Phillips prefers Hodge.”

He makes a hacking noise of disapproval with his throat that makes Peggy smile. “And what do you think of Hodge?”

Taking a bite of her tasteless eggs, she admits, “The highlight of my time here has been punching him in the face.”

“A man like Hodge, he has a good face for punching.”

* * *

When Peggy hears Phillips shout, “Grenade!” she does not hesitate. She is running for it, prepared to throw herself down upon it just as she’s been trained when she sees Steve Rogers has already beaten her to it. His tiny body is curled up in the fetal position, one thin arm waving wildly for everyone to back away, and it is then she sees what Dr. Erskine has seen in Steve Rogers all along.

“When Phillips threw that grenade, you knew Steve would jump on it.”

Erskine shrugs. “I had a feeling.”

“A feeling? And what made you so sure Hodge wouldn’t?”

“A man like Hodge does not have selflessness in him. How many men have we seen like Hodge? How many men have we seen like Private Rogers?” He shrugs again. “Two people ran for that grenade today, and they are the two I knew would.”

She feels a light blush fill her cheeks. “Is that so?”

He smiles, patting her knee as he gets to his feet. “If your government would have let me, I’d have given you my serum already, dear Peggy.”

But Peggy knows just as well as Erskine does that the US government would never allow the greatest potential for beating the Nazis to be given to a woman.

And so Steven Grant Rogers is selected for the Super Soldier Serum.

* * *

When she hears the gunshots in the wake of the explosion, Peggy doesn’t hesitate. She draws her gun and fires, giving pursuit. When Rogers knocks her to the ground outside before giving chase, it strikes Peggy that she doesn’t know what the damage is beyond the theft of the serum.

As she descends the stairs, she sees Howard kneeling beside Erskine, two blooms of blood on their fallen friend’s lab coat. Phillips is barking orders, people are being moved around and hurried out, but all Peggy sees is Dr. Erskine.

Howard is mumbling something as Peggy kneels down beside him, and it takes her a moment to realize it is Hebrew, that he is saying a prayer. She hasn’t the faintest idea what Howard is saying or even how Howard knows Hebrew, but she takes Erskine’s cold hand, closes her eyes, and allows hot tears to course down her cheeks.

They bury Dr. Erskine in a Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn, Howard covering the cost of everything. The government has already taken possession of Steve, sending him off to do whatever it is they have planned for him, and so it is just her, Howard, and Phillips at the graveside. Phillips leaves as the gravediggers start to cover the casket, but she and Howard remain. 

Both she and Howard have already buried their fathers and yet here they are again. Somehow Peggy feels like even more of an orphan now.

“What do we do now?” Howard asks, sounding uncertain for the first time since Peggy’s known him.

“We destroy Hydra. We win this war. We make his death mean something.”


	3. 1944-1945

Colonel Phillips requisitions her from the SSR, bringing her to Europe. Though she’s worked with Phillips since her joining the agency and enjoys working with him, it bothers her that the SSR hands her over like a piece of equipment, as if she’s just another weapon in the war. But so long as she’s with Phillips, she can’t be sent on another honeypot mission, so Peggy doesn’t complain.

It infuriates her when she sees the first poster of Steve Rogers all dressed up as Captain America, grinning like the charming boy he isn’t, USO girls in the background. She thinks of the sacrifices they all made for the Super Soldier Serum, of the hours Howard and Erskine spent in the lab, of the lengths she’d gone to in order to keep the project safe, of Erskine bleeding to death on that floor in Brooklyn, and Peggy shreds the poster in a rage. Abraham Erskine did not die so that their government could use his greatest invention to sell war bonds.

She means it when she tells Steve, “You were meant for more than this.” Erskine saw something more in him, Peggy saw something more in him, and she knows Steve wants more than punching fake Hitler in the face for crowds of fans.

But selfishly Peggy also knows _she_ is meant for more than what she’s doing and she owes Erskine to see his dream – for Steve to help destroy the men who killed his family and ruined his country – come to fruition.

“You have that look in your eye,” Howard says when Peggy enters the lab, his shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows, nimble hands working on some device.

“What look is that?”

“The kind that says trouble is going to come my way.”

“You love trouble.”

Howard nods as he sets down his screwdriver. “I do. So what’s going on?”

“I need you to fly me somewhere.”

His body sagged in disappointment. “That’s all?”

“Not exactly.”

When she finishes explaining the plan, Howard’s eyebrows are almost at his hairline. “Christ on a cross, Pegs, you don’t do anything half-assed, do you?”

Peggy smiles. She knows a yes when she hears it.

Despite all her bravado, Peggy knows how dangerous this is. Not only is she flying into restricted airspace in a stolen plane piloted by a civilian on an unapproved mission; she’s doing it with the most valuable piece of “property” the government has that, if captured by the Nazis, could be devastating to the war effort.

This is treason, a hanging offense, and Peggy would rather prefer _not_ dying.

She doesn’t even hear Howard’s invitation, too wrapped up in her own nervous thoughts, until she notices the awkward flutter of Steve’s hand.

“Do you…fondue?” 

It takes her half of a moment to understand what he is asking her and then there is the kneejerk angry rush in her gut. He is hardly the first person to ask if she and Howard are lovers. Hell, he isn’t even the first person this week to ask it. God knows enough of the soldiers insinuate it or outright accuse her of it when she dares to turn them down for dates. If she got angry every time some idiot in a uniform asked if she went to bed with Howard, she’d have punched most of the infantry by now.

But she’s literally risking life and limb to help Steve rescue his best friend, has gone above and beyond to convince him of her belief in him, and _still_ he asks?

After he leaps from the plane, Peggy moves towards the cockpit, so full of anxious energy she cannot sit still another moment. As she stares out into the darkness ahead of them, Howard says, “I hope you’re bracing yourself.”

“For?”

“For how bad it’s going to hurt when you fall off that pedestal Rogers has you on.”

Peggy tries not to flinch. “Shut up, Howard.”

* * *

“Should I run down the list of crimes you two committed last night or just throw you in the brig right now?” 

Peggy hopes her expression conveys an appropriate amount of regret though she feels none. She is a skilled liar; she would be of no value to the SSR if she wasn’t. But she has never quite mastered pretending she was wrong just to soothe a man’s ego.

“It wasn’t Howard’s idea.”

Phillips snorts. “You want to state any other obvious things, Carter? Is the sky blue? Is water wet? Of course this wasn’t Stark’s idea. This has you written all over it.”

“I know you don’t have much faith in Captain Rogers – “

“Because he’s not a damn captain! He’s a showgirl with hardly a lick of training that you sent into an active combat zone without any backup on a goddamn suicide mission! There is a reason you are not the one who gives the orders around here, Carter!”

Peggy struggles not to shout back, to remain deferential even as every impulse in her body told her to do otherwise. “I believe in him, Colonel.”

“Well I hope that belief was well-placed, Agent, because if Steven Rogers doesn’t get back here alive, all of our asses are on the line.”

Peggy doesn’t doubt for a second that she did the right thing.

And when Steve comes marching in to camp with nearly 400 men from the 107th behind him, Peggy knows for the first time that Phillips wasn’t just wrong about Steve. He was wrong about her too. 

She _should_ be the one giving orders.

* * *

The red dress was a 22nd birthday gift from Howard, completely impractical behind the lines and a sinful waste of money. It is also the most perfectly fitting garment she’s ever owned, and when she’d asked Howard how he got her size correct, he’d grinned and said, “I’m never wrong about a lady’s measurements.” 

Howard wanted her to wear it out with him to some expensive restaurant in London. He’d made reservations and everything, spinning a fantastical line of bullshit about how he expected nothing more than her company.

She refused the invitation.

She kept the dress.

There are no stockings anymore, and while she knows some of the secretaries lament this, Peggy does not. The only thing she’s ever mastered when it came to stockings was putting massive runs in them, so much so that her mother never failed to curse her for it. She doesn’t even bother having one of the girls from the secretarial pool draw lines up the backs of her legs with pencil to give the illusion of stockings. Truth be told, she feels bolder without them, loves the feel of the skirt against her skin and the scandalous idea that all that’s standing between her and the man she wants is a pair of her nicest underwear.

Peggy’s never considered herself vain, but she holds her chin a bit higher as she walks through the pub, drawing the eye of every man there. The logical part of her brain reminds her that a female mountain troll could stroll through here and one of the soldiers would want to fuck it, so deprived of female companionship since being shipped overseas that standards are not a factor. But Peggy knows exactly what she looks like tonight, having perfected the look while at Bletchley.

“You look like you’re asking for it,” Jane used to laugh as Peggy outlined her lips in a shade of red that would have made her mother drop dead.

“I am,” she’d offer in return before blowing Jane a kiss, off for a tumble with whatever handsome man she decided to blow off steam with that evening.

As she spots Steve and Sergeant Barnes at the bar, Peggy puts a bit more swing in her step. She does not want there to be a question in Steve Rogers’s mind that she is asking for it.

Except all he can seem to do is stare at her while Barnes prattles on, more than ready to give her what she wants from his best friend.

The problem with wanting a man so good and honorable, Peggy realizes as she leaves the pub alone, is that he is not the sort of man who will take her back to his cot for a tumble.

“Goddamn, Carter,” Howard says as Peggy approaches her tent, his head hallowed in smoke from his cigarette, “you trying to kill the guy?”

She grabs the cigarette from his hand. “Shut up, Howard.” 

Taking the cigarette back from her after she’s had a pull, Howard adds, “He’s an idiot if he left you leave alone.”

“He’s a good man.”

“That’s what you want, a good man?” 

“I don’t know what I want.”

“That dress says otherwise.”

“You’ve fucked every USO girl and half the nursing corps, and you’re going to cast judgment on me?”

Howard’s eyebrows shoot up. “I’m not judging you, pal. There’s a hundred guys at this camp who would be happy to give it to you, myself included. I’m just saying – “

“What _are_ you saying?”

He softens. “Be careful, Pegs. That’s all.”

The last person in the world she needs to be taking romantic advice from is Howard bloody Stark. And yet as she lies in bed that night, the dress neatly packed away again, she can’t help but hear his warning over and over again.

* * *

There is such a dearth of women in the field there is a camaraderie between them all. Just yesterday, Peggy helped Private Lorraine wrap up her hair before bed and then they’d shared a bit of Schnapps the blonde kept in her footlocker. She _liked_ Lorraine with her sharp tongue and amusing stories about the soldiers who hit on her, and Peggy considered Diana Lorraine a friend.

Which is why seeing her wrapped around Steve, engaged in an enthusiastic kiss, feels like a betrayal on every level.

She vibrates with rage as she leads Steve away from Diana, body strung tighter than a bowstring. She’d thought he was different. She’d thought he was special.

And as he stands there holding that shield, smiling like some overgrown Boy Scout so pure and innocent, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, Peggy doesn’t even think. She grabs the pistol on the table and fires off four shots, pure satisfaction flooding her body as he hides behind it.

“Yes, I think it works,” she says before leaving him and Howard in her wake.

Let Steve Rogers act like every other soldier, but she’ll be damned if she lets him think she’s just like every other woman who falls at his feet.

* * *

“The sainted Agent Carter smokes?”

Peggy looks over her shoulder to see Sergeant Barnes approaching, handsome as he was at the pub days earlier though with darker circles beneath his eyes. She holds up the hand with a cigarette pinched between two fingers. “It would appear so.”

“My ma always says you can’t trust a gal that smokes, that they’re trouble.” Barnes grins. “Suppose that’s why I’m partial to them.”

“Is it?”

“Can I bum one?”

They’re Howard’s cigarettes, swiped from his pocket while he was putting the moves on some secretary so young, she’s barely out of pigtails, so she shakes one out of the pack for Barnes. Lighting it for him, she asks, “Get in a lot of trouble back in Brooklyn?” 

“Not as much as Stevie. Boy never knew how to walk away from a fight.” Gesturing towards the muddy field around them, he adds, “And now here we are.”

“And you were some hapless victim to his plans?”

Barnes smiles with a shrug. “Boys will be boys.”

“In my experience whenever someone says that it’s to justify some sort of asinine behavior.”

They smoke in silence for a couple minutes before Barnes says, “You need to understand what it’s like for him. Back home, before whatever shit you and Stark did to him, no gal so much as looked at him. I used to have to beg my dates to convince one of their friends to come out with him. They didn’t see Steve; they just saw the little guy who ran out of breath walking down the block.”

“Your point?”

“My point is, he can barely talk to a dame, let alone know how to tell one to back off when she’s all over him. Hell, a year ago I was convinced I was going to have to pay someone to touch his dick.” Making an apologetic face, he continues, “But Steve isn’t Captain America; he’s still the little guy. And the little guy, he’s so fucking in love with you, if I have to hear about it one more time, I might just shoot him myself. So give the guy a break, huh?”

Pulling another cigarette from the pack, Peggy squeezes it between her lips as she lights it. “Anything else?”

Barnes throws away his cigarette. “Yeah. Shoot at my best friend again, we’re going to have problems.”

As he walks away, Peggy smiles. She thinks she may just like James Barnes.

* * *

Everywhere she turns, there is Captain America and his Howling Commandoes. Every newspaper, news reel, talk on the street is all about Steve and his men, striking fear in the hearts of Nazis everywhere. It’s downright cartoonish the way people idolize them, but Peggy thinks of Erskine, of his fervent hope to right what Hitler has done, and she hopes he knows he’s succeeded. Steve Rogers is precisely what Abraham Erskine had in mind for his Super Soldier Serum, and god knows Senator Brandt is constantly crowing about him.

But they are just men. And every time they stagger back into camp, tired and bruised, shadows in their eyes, Peggy wonders if she’s the only person left on earth who remembers this.

The Commandoes are all drinkers, particularly after returning from a mission, but Peggy doesn’t find Steve in the pub. She knows there are whispers around camp about them already and though she cares for her reputation, she does not want to miss seeing him before leaving. Between her schedule and the Commandoes next mission, time together is becoming rare.

She finds him in his tent, stripped to the waist despite the chill in the air, his dog tags glinting against his chest in the muted light. He is bent over a sketchpad, his face fixed in concentration, and it makes her heart swell.

“Am I interrupting?”

Steve’s head jerks up, eyes wide. He starts to reach for his discarded shirt, mumbling an apology but she cuts in, “It’s your tent, Captain Rogers. You can wear what you like.”

He freezes, shirt clutched in his hand. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Peggy shrugs. “I quite enjoy the view.”

It makes her smile to see how his blush extends all the way down his chest. “Do you – Did you need something?”

“I wanted to see you before I leave. I have to go to London for a few days, and I hear you’re going after Zola.”

Steve nods, sitting back on his cot and relaxing a bit. “We’ll get him.”

“I’ve no doubt.” Crossing the tent, she takes a seat on the foot of his bed. “You’ll be careful?”

“Of course. And you’ll – “

“I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”

“I’ve never doubted it.”

He is so sincere when he says it, it does something to her heart. Taking a deep breath, Peggy moves closer, laying a hand on his knee. Steve inhales, tensing in surprise, and she says, “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“I might be bad at it,” he blurts out as she leans in.

Peggy chuckles as she cups his face. “Don’t worry, soldier. It’s my job to whip you into shape, remember?”

His mouth is warm and soft, the muscle in his jaw tight beneath her hand. The longer she kisses him, the more he relaxes, and by the time she glides the tip of her tongue along his bottom lip, slipping into his lap, Steve moans against her mouth, his hands instinctively clutching her ass. Peggy gasps in surprise and even as he starts to apologize, she’s swallowing the words, giving him her tongue and trying to coax his into action. 

“Peg,” he pants against her mouth, and she can feel how hard he is between her legs, her restrictive skirt hiked as far up her thighs as possible. She runs her hands down his chest, fulfilling the impulse she first had the moment he came out of the chamber in Brooklyn, and he pitches his hips up in a bid for friction. 

“You can touch me,” she says, taking hold of his wrists and bringing his hands to the buttons on her shirt. “I _want_ you to touch me.”

She’s seen the damage Steven can wrought with his hands, which is why it makes her fall more in love with him to see his hands trembling as he fumbles with the buttons of her shirt. As his knuckles brush her breasts, Peggy arches into the touch, and Steve’s eyes meet hers, the question in them.

“Unless I say no, it’s all right.”

Steve squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before nodding, peeling her shirt off of her shoulders to reveal her bra. It is hardly the most scintillating piece of lingerie, but judging by the way Steve cannot look away from her breasts, she wonders if this is the first time he’s ever seen a semi-naked woman. Reaching behind her, Peggy finds the clasp of her bra and unhooks it, shaking free of it.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Steve breathes, and it almost makes her laugh, the hint of an Irish lilt to the words as if he’s repeating what’s heard his parents say a hundred times. 

Taking his hands and leading them to her breasts, Peggy kisses him again, moaning as his thumbs roll across her nipples. She swivels her hips, working herself against his erection, and his touch becomes rougher, his kisses more frantic.

“Whoa, shit, sorry!”

Peggy whips around to see Barnes standing near the entrance of the tent, his back to them, but the glimpse is brief, Steve practically throwing her over his hip to shield her from Barnes’s gaze.

“Get out, Buck!”

Even after the tent flap closes Peggy knows the mood is ruined and, judging by the slump of his shoulders, Steve does too. As she reaches for her bra, Peggy says, “It could’ve been worse.”

Steve looks at her as if she’s mad. “How?”

“At least it wasn’t Phillips.”

Before they part, she says, “After Zola, request a few days leave. I’d rather we do this in a proper bed, hmm?”

Steve nods, smiling before kissing her again. 

But then Barnes falls from the train and nothing is ever the same.

* * *

Every objective Agent Peggy Carter has ever been given was related to Project Rebirth: extracting Erskine from Schmidt, protecting Erskine, finding the right candidate for the Serum, doing whatever it took to ensure Erskine’s goal of defeating Hydra.

But as Peggy pleads for Steve to please turn the plane around, to let Howard try to fix this, to do anything but what he is intent on doing, the last thing on her mind is her mission. For the first time in her life, all Peggy thinks about is how much she loves this man and how desperately she does not want to live without him.

But just like every other man she’s loved, Steve Rogers dies, and so does the last romantic piece of Peggy Carter’s soul.


	4. 1945-1946

Phillips orders her away from the front. He says the leave is for one month but includes the caveat, “If it’s too much, you can go back to London.”

Peggy’s lost count of how many men have died since this war started, how many best friend and brothers-in-arms absolutely fell apart upon realizing their pal wasn’t coming back. There was no leave for them, no offer to return home to deal with their grief. She is no war widow receiving telegram and she refuses to be treated like one.

But Phillips calls her an insubordinate pain in the ass and threatens to tie her up and drop her on the next plane out of the country if she doesn’t do what he says.

Howard sees her off, looking pale and exhausted with his coat having off of him. A cigarette dangles between his lips and he smokes it like it’s the last one on earth. “By the time you’re back, I’ll have found him.”

It’s the first promise Howard ever makes to her he doesn’t keep.

* * *

Despite having reached the manly age of seventeen, when Hal sees her step off of the train, he leaps about, flailing his spindly limbs as if she would otherwise not know what her brother looks like. Though it has been almost two years since she’s been home, Hal looks quite the same albeit stretched out, towering over Peggy, his dark hair a bit too long and glasses sliding down his pointed nose. His terrible eyesight will keep Hal out of this endless war, and it is one of the few things Peggy is still grateful for in this world.

Her mother is far more sedate beside him, dressed in her finest despite its inappropriateness for the country, and it almost makes Peggy laugh. Only Elizabeth Danvers would still have her hair set, her clothes freshly pressed, and a pair of real stockings on her legs in the middle of a world war.

“Look at you!” Hal cries, trying to swing her around but only managing to send them both stumbling, Peggy’s duffel falling to the ground. “You look like a real soldier!”

“I _am_ a real soldier.” Peggy runs a hand over his cowlick, which immediately pops up again. “You almost look like a proper lad.”

“I’m the tallest in my class now,” he reports, his words strained as he swings her duffel over his shoulder, “and the fastest. Father thinks I could have a real future in track and field.”

 _Then we can both be disappointments to Mother,_ Peggy thinks as she manages a brittle smile as they stop in front of the woman in question. “Hello, Mother.”

Elizabeth gives a minute inclination of her head. “Margaret.”

For Lady Elizabeth Danvers, it’s a downright warm welcome, especially given the last time Peggy saw her mother, she insulted her appearance and then heavily implied she would have Peggy disinherited if she was found to be a lesbian. Apparently two years is the point at which her mother reverts from hostile rejection to all of Peggy’s life choices to stoic acceptance.

“Your hair’s a fright,” Elizabeth says as Hal stumbles a bit as he swings Peggy’s duffel over his shoulder. “You’ll have to see my girl while you’re here.”

“There aren’t many salons on the front.”

“Which is one of the reasons a proper young woman doesn’t belong there.” 

Peggy thinks she’d rather have a tea party with Armin Zola and Johann Schmidt than spend the next few weeks with her mother.

* * *

Peggy spends her days alternating between being unable to sleep, plagued by nightmares of what happened to Steve, and sleeping for almost entire days. Hal tries to engage her on the few trips she makes to the bathroom, but Peggy cannot manage small talk or indulge Hal’s desperate request for war stories. Away from the front, away from having a purpose, Peggy is falling apart and she just doesn’t know how to stop it. 

She thinks of Phillips’s offer to send her back to London, to return her to the SSR, and Peggy starts to wonder what her life would have been like if she’d done things the way she planned. If she’d just gone to university, if she hadn’t pled with Uncle Simon to help her join the war effort, would she be happy now?

Peggy isn’t certain how long she’s been at the country house when her mother marches into her room one morning, jerking open the curtains and waking Peggy with the blinding morning light.

“Bloody hell, Mum, close the damn curtains!” Peggy shouts, jerking the blanket over her head.

“Last time I checked, this is my house, and in my house, we do not sleep all day long. You have twenty minutes to get up, make yourself presentable, and be down at the table.”  
Lifting her chin like a petulant child, Peggy challenges, “Or what?” 

Unimpressed, Elizabeth calls over her shoulder as she leaves the room, “Or I’m coming back with a pitcher of water, Margaret Elizabeth.”

She hasn’t been middle named by her mother since she was thirteen-years-old and her mother discovered the son of one of Clarence’s business partners with his hand under Peggy’s sweater. And yet here she is, eleven years later, and for some reason Peggy finds herself listening.

Her mother sits at the head of the table in the chair she only ever abandons once Clarence comes home, her posture perfect even as she butters a piece of bread. Peggy doesn’t even question how her mother came by actual butter; rationing never seems to affect the rich as much as the poor. As she sits in the seat that’s been designated hers since her arrival, Peggy reaches for the pitcher of juice, pouring herself a glass. When the liquid hits her tongue, she realizes how dry her mouth is and tries to remember the last time she drank something.

“I was 27-years-old when your father did what he did,” Elizabeth begins, setting down her butter knife and casually gesturing with one hand for one of the maids to pour her a cup of tea. “I had two children, not a single cent of my own money, a mountain of debts, and no way to care for myself. I truly believed I’d have to go become a laundress or something so you and Hal didn’t starve. Despite your high opinion of your uncle, I had to plead with Simon for an allowance until I met Clarence. It was the most humiliating time of my life.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because if I could piece my life back together under far worse circumstances, there is no reason for you to be drowning yourself in self-pity in one of my guest rooms.” Taking a sip of her tea, she asks, “You loved that boy, the one they called Captain America?”

Throat tightening, Peggy nods, keeping her eyes downcast.

“Then I’m sorry he passed. But if there is one thing I can say about you, Margaret, it is that you are the most stubborn girl I’ve ever known. The quickest way to get you to do something was to tell you that you couldn’t do it, and while I certainly don’t agree with the choices you’ve made in your life, I _do_ know you’ll never find yourself in the same circumstances I was in after your father died. If this boy’s death can break you so easily, you are not the girl I know and certainly not the girl I raised.”

Peggy wants to lash out, to scream how Elizabeth hadn’t raised her at all, abdicating responsibility to boarding schools and headmistresses. But instead she lets the words sink in, lets herself feel the truth in her mother’s words. Peggy cannot think of a single time she and her mother have had a heart-to-heart conversation, and though it is the most foreign feeling in the world, Peggy also wonders if this is what it feels like to have a mother.

“I miss him so much,” she confesses, a rogue tear rolling down her cheek.

Her body tensing, Elizabeth gives a short nod. “Yes, well, that will never change, but you’ll get used to it.” She takes a bite of her toast. “We’re going into town after breakfast. I refuse to look at that dreadful hair of yours a moment longer.”

Taking a swallow of her juice, Peggy wonders if this is as close to “I love you” as her mother can get.

* * *

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Peggy smiles as she and Hal walk the grounds, her arm linked through her little brother’s, and she wonders if she’ll ever be able to look at Hal and not think of him as a child. “Could I stop you even if I wanted?”

Hal laughs. “No. But it’s a good secret. Mum doesn’t even know yet.”

“Oh, those are the best secrets!”

“Dad knows,” he continues, and Peggy forces herself not to flinch at the way he so casually refers to Clarence. After all, Hal has no memory of Harold Carter. Why shouldn’t he claim Clarence as his father? “He’s the one who helped set it up.”

Peggy’s blood turns to ice as a horrifying thought strikes her. “You’ve not joined the army?”

Hal laughs. “Are you mad? They wouldn’t take me even if we were down to our last three men. The second my glasses get knocked off of my face, I’m useless. No, this is about university.”

“You’re not going to Oxford?”

He shakes his head, a childish grin spreading across his face. “No, I’m going to America.”

“America?!”

“I’m going to Yale. That’s in Connecticut,” he adds.

“Yes, I know, I’ve actually _been_ to America. But why not Oxford? I thought that’s what you wanted.”

Despite the fact they’re quite far from the house, Hal drops his voice. “I can’t take it around here anymore. Mum and Dad, they barely talk, and Mum is always on me about something. It seems like I can’t do a bloody thing right.”

Peggy snorts. “Well I certainly understand that. You know she’ll hit the moon when you tell her.”

“You could help, couldn’t you?”

“How?”

“I don’t know, do something she hates more first? You could join the circus or chop off all your hair or join the Third Reich.”

Peggy laughs, pulling Hal closer against her. “Anything else other than becoming a bald, juggling Nazi?”

“Nope, pretty sure that’s all that can save me now.” Hal drops his head atop Peggy’s. “I miss you so much, Peg. Promise me you’ll go to America after the war’s over so we can be together, hmm?”

The war has been going on for so long, Peggy’s stopped thinking about what will happen after it’s all done. But as soon as Hal says it, Peggy knows there’s nothing left in Europe for her anymore.

When the war is over, she decides, she’ll go to America too.

* * *

It isn’t until she returns to camp that she realizes no one expected her to return. The Commandoes, Phillips, even Howard, they all look at her as if she is some sort of apparition come to haunt her, and it makes her want to punch each and every one of them in the face.

But she doesn’t. Instead she stands there in her uniform, as put together as she ever was before, and says, “What have I missed?”

Phillips isn’t the sort of man to smile, but Peggy sees in his eyes he’d like to do it.

* * *

The first time she goes into the field with the 107th, Peggy realizes this is what she’s wanted all along, to be in the thick of it, to be useful, but it is also horrible because Steve is not here. She wants to talk to him about what they’re doing, about what victory will look like, about how cold it gets at night and how she misses having a warm bed. Hell, she’d even talk about Dugan’s snoring just so long as she could talk to him.

But he’s gone, and being in the field somehow makes that pain worse.

She doesn’t sleep much on missions, staying awake in her sleeping bag and listening to the men talk, snore, or drink their sorrows away. Peggy understands wanting everything to disappear. Sometimes, when it is very quiet in the dark of night, she even hears the men cry. Peggy understands that most of all.

On their fourth mission, they are somewhere in France, and Peggy cannot sleep. Bundling herself back up into her coat and boots, she stumbles outside the barn they’re bedding down in that night to relieve whoever is on watch duty. It is Gabe tonight, the moonlight filtering through the trees and the tip of his cigarette the only bits of light around them. Despite this, he holds a letter in his hand that he starts to put away as Peggy moves to sit beside him.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting?”

Gabe laughs mirthlessly, handing over the folded envelope. Given the amount of wrinkles in it, it’s been handled dozens of times. Peggy can make out the return address just enough to see it is from Gabe’s fiancée. “Everyone else already knows.”

Peggy closes her eyes in sympathy. He isn’t the first to get a letter ending a relationship since the war started and he won’t be the last. Through their talking, Peggy feels like she knows all the wives and girlfriends of the Commandoes, and she knows Gabe’s fiancée is named Dorothy, loves to dance, and currently works in a munitions factory. They’d met while Gabe was at Howard, Dorothy waiting tables at a jazz club he and his friends frequented, and Gabe was head over heels for her.

“She’s making a terrible mistake.”

Gabe shakes a cigarette out of his pack, lighting it with his own before passing it to Peggy. “My sister Naomi, she told me there’s another guy, some 4-F who works at the factory with her. She’s already pregnant.”

“Fuck,” Peggy breathes, taking a heavy pull from her cigarette. “I’m sorry, Jones.”

His half-smile is somewhat more genuine. “If I’m spilling my guts to you, Carter, you can at least call me Gabe.”

Peggy smiles. “Then you should call me Peggy.”

“Peggy,” he repeats as if tasting her name. “Doesn’t quite seem right.”

“Why not?”

Gabe looks away for a moment, obviously uncomfortable, before admitting, “Because you’re Cap’s girl and he was the only one who called you that.”

“Well, you and all the others can call me by my bloody name. I’m more than just Cap’s girl.”

“You really think we don’t know that?”

Peggy shrugs, sending a stream of smoke up into the sky. “Sometimes I wonder.”

“You’re one of us, a Howling-fucking-Commando. We don’t let you come on missions because we pity you.”

“ _Let_ me?”

He smirks. “You really think if we didn’t want you here, we couldn’t get you reassigned? Colonel Phillips likes you but even he knows he needs us more than he needs you.”

“Fuck off,” she says, jostling him with her shoulder and earning a small laugh out of him. 

They smoke in silence for a long time, Gabe handing over more cigarettes. Peggy isn’t sure how long they’ve been sitting there when Gabe asks, “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“I don’t really sleep anymore.”

“Me either.” Flicking his spent cigarette into the snow, he adds, “Guess broken hearts do that.”

She starts volunteering for watch with Gabe, grateful to have someone to talk to who understands a fraction of her pain.

* * *

“So I was thinking – “

“That’s always a dangerous thing,” Peggy interrupts, pouring herself a double from Howard’s bottle of bourbon.

“We should get married.”

Peggy laughs. “What, to each other?”

“Yeah. What, you don’t think I’m marriage material?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Gee, thanks, pal.”

“Howard, you’ve bedded almost every USO girl and half of Hollywood, and that’s not even counting the socialites and secretaries. Besides, we’ve never even been on a date, so why would I marry you?”

“Hey, I’ve asked you on plenty dates.”

“And my continual refusals somehow made you think you should offer me this half-assed proposal?”

Howard drops into the chair opposite her. “I’d buy you a ring if you wanted one.”

“I want neither a ring nor to marry you.” Taking a sip of her bourbon, she asks, “Why would you even think we should get married?”

Howard nods. “I don’t know. You’re the only dame I’ve never gotten sick of being around.”

Peggy rolls her eyes. “You are the pinnacle of romance.”

“I’d be good to you.”

It is only then Peggy hears the slight slur to his words and notices the lassitude in his limbs. Softening, Peggy sets down her tumbler. “I know you would, Howard. And I love you dearly, you know that, but I don’t…It’s not like that between us. It’ll never be like that with us.”

His smile is so sad, it breaks her heart almost as much as his next words. “Is it because I haven’t found him yet?”

Throat tightening with unexpected emotion, Peggy shakes her head. “No, it’s not because of that. It has nothing to do with Steve.”

Howard closes his eyes and tilts his head back. After a minute he slurs, “Aren’t spies supposed to be better liars?”

He passes out in his chair. Peggy heaves him up against her body and manages to get him into his cot, tucking him in like a child.

* * *

It happens by accident, which is the most ridiculous thing to think and had it been said by anyone else, Peggy would’ve laughed in their face. But the truth is, it _is_ an accident, something she certainly hadn’t been planning. Not consciously at least. Despite the face she puts on for the world, Peggy is still deeply in mourning for Steve. She has no desire to move on right now.

And yet somehow in the dark of night, still wearing most of her clothes, Peggy ends up riding Gabe, his back braced against a tree, his moans muffled against her shoulder.

She’s always liked sex, liked the release it brings and the sense of peace she has afterwards. Unlike some of her friends, she’s never been embarrassed by it or played coy. Peggy knew she’d had a reputation at boarding school for being fast, for being a good time girl unsuitable for taking home, and she’d taken a perverse pride in that. Why should men get to have all the fun?

But this isn’t fun. It’s sad and desperate and a feeble attempt to patch the crater in her heart, and Peggy thinks it’s the same for Gabe, sweet, smart Gabe who loves Dorothy and not her, who would rather be back in DC fixing things with his girl than fucking his dead friend’s girl in some godforsaken spot in France.

This is all they have, and it makes Peggy turn her face towards the sky, tears rolling down her cheeks even as she shakes through an orgasm.

When they return to camp, Peggy joins Howard on a plane to London. She doesn’t say goodbye to Gabe, too ashamed to face him.

It will be ten years before she sees him again.

* * *

“You almost killed me,” Howard complains, toweling off his wet hair.

“Consider it a lesson in why you shouldn’t kiss unwilling women. Besides, you have a half-dozen houses on different beaches. How was I supposed to know you can’t swim?”

“I grew up in the city.”

“So did I but I still learned to swim.” Handing him another towel, Peggy adds, “I wouldn’t have let you drown. Suffer a bit, maybe, but not drown.”

“Gee, thanks, pal.”

“You tried to kiss me!”

“Because the war is over! Because we fucking did it! Because maybe everything we’ve been through in the last six goddamn years were actually worth something! You make it sound like I was trying to grab your tit for the sake of it.”

Peggy takes one of the soiled towels from him, hanging it on the shower bar of the small bathroom attached to his hotel room. “I’m not going to apologize because I didn’t like you grabbing me.”

Howard snorts. “Like Peggy Carter knows how to apologize.”

Arching an eyebrow, she snaps, “You know, it would be a terrible shame for those frogmen to have fished you out of the river only for me to kill you here.”

Holding up his hands in surrender, Howard grumbles, “Aren’t you even a little happy we won?”

Peggy looks out the window onto the street where everyone is celebrating. Her mind on Steve, on Bucky, on Dr. Erskine, she shivers. Crossing her arms over her chest, she asks, “Does this really feel like winning?”

* * *

She accepts the position in the SSR’s New York office without hesitation. Colonel Phillips writes her a stellar recommendation, tells her he knows the recently appointed bureau chief there and how he’s certain this man Dooley will find a good use for her talents.

“Try to stay out of trouble, Carter,” Phillips orders.

Some of the 107th is staying in Europe, flushing out the Nazis who have gone into hiding, searching for the Hydra operatives that escaped, hoping to keep the next tyrant from rising to power. Dugan tries to convince her to stay with them, insisting they’ll be lost without her. Peggy almost asks him why he isn’t going home, why he doesn’t want to return to his wife and children, but the war has done things to all of them, changed them all in ways they never anticipated. If Dugan wants to keep fighting, it’s not Peggy’s place to ask why no more than it is his place to tell her why she should stay.

Morita goes home. So does Gabe and Dernier and Falsworth. She misses the chance to say goodbye to Gabe or Dernier, but Falsworth gives her a great, big hug and Morita writes down his address, tells her to look him up if she ever finds herself in San Francisco.

“You’ll always be one of us, Peg,” Morita tells her, and she wonders how she came to love these men so bloody much.

She finds Colleen’s ad for a roommate in the paper. Peggy likes her and likes the small flat even if they do have to share the bed, something made easier by alternating shifts. Colleen works at one of the factories, and Peggy’s cover is being an operator at the phone company. It’s a cover so boring, Colleen doesn’t ask questions beyond, “Do you ever listen in on the conversations?”

On her first day, she wears her best suit, her new red hat, and the first pair of real stockings she’s had in years. Peggy vibrates with eagerness, wanting to get back to work, wanting to do good in the world. She rides the elevator to the top, introducing herself to Rose on the switchboard. As she enters the SSR offices, she quickly sees she’s the only woman, but that’s hardly something new.

“Hello.”

Peggy smiles at the man in front of her. He’s about her height, dark hair and eyes, a crutch in his right hand. His smile is open and welcoming, and there is something about him that makes her heart ache with familiarity.

“Hello. I’m Peggy Carter. I’m to meet with Agent Dooley?”

The man’s eyes light up with recognition. “Oh, right, Agent Carter from England. I’m Daniel Sousa. Right this way.”

As they make their way through the office, Peggy hears someone wolf whistle, hears someone else make a comment about her ass. She holds her chin up higher, pretends she doesn’t hear. When she’s alone in the office with Agent Dooley, Peggy starts to relax, ready for the older man to give her an assignment, thank her for her service during the war, anything other than the disrespect from her new colleagues. 

Instead he says, “You’re here because Colonel Phillips pulled strings for you. I know things were different during the war, but to be honest, I don’t think dames belong doing this sort of work. Now, I can’t refuse you a job because I’m outranked, but this isn’t Europe and I’m not Phillips. Whatever it is you used to do, you won’t be doing that here.”

Peggy tries to keep her voice even as she says, “I think you’ll find, Agent Dooley, I’m a rather capable agent. I speak several languages and have extensive experience with code breaking – “

“Carter, this ain’t a debatable thing. You want to work here, you do what I say when I say it. You got that?”

She bites the inside of her cheek so hard she tastes iron. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He gestured behind her. “There’s an empty desk in the back. If you got questions, I don’t want to hear them. There’s a briefing in fifteen minutes. Why don’t you go get some coffee ready for us?”

She wants to kill him. “Yes, sir.”

Seventeen cups of coffee. That’s how many she pours that first day, and she’s certain Agent Thompson and Agent Krezminski just pour the cups out simply to call for another. Peggy keeps her face calm, refusing to give them an inch.

“It’ll get better,” Sousa says to her when they’re on the elevator. “They always mess with the new guy.”

“I’m sure.”

When she gets home to her shared flat, Peggy switches on the radio. As she steps out of her shoes and starts to undress, she hears “Betty Carver” calling for Captain America to save her from the Nazis.

Peggy sits down on the bed and cries.


End file.
